Concept
Sic et Non
Overview
Sic et Non, an early (c. 1121) scholastic text whose title translates from Medieval Latin as "Yes and No", was written by Peter Abelard. In the work, Abelard juxtaposes apparently contradictory quotations from the Church Fathers on many of the traditional topics of Christian theology. In the Prologue, Abelard outlines rules for reconciling these contradictions, the most important of which is noting the multiple significations of a single word. However, Abelard does not himself apply these rules in the body of the Sic et Non, which has led scholars to conclude that the work was meant as an exercise book for students in applying dialectic (logic) to theology.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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And the Greek name of this faculty is derived from the use of the term συνιέναι in learning: μανθάνειν and συνιέναι being often used as synonymous. The faculty called γνώμη,[40] in right of which we call men εὐγνώμονες, or say they have γνώμη, is “the right judgment of the equitable man.” A proof of which is that we most commonly say that the equitable man has a tendency to make allowance, and the making allowance…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
States what Sic et Non is; the author is tied to Sic et Non in the knowledge graph.
The peculiar importance of this controversy lay in its effect on the status of the Church. If nominalism should prevail, then the Church would be shorn of much of its authority, for its greatest power lay in the conception of it as an enduring reality outside of and above all the individuals who shared in its work. It is not strange, then, that the ardent realism of William of Champeaux should have been outraged by…
Peter Abelard, Historia Calamitatum
The author is tied to Sic et Non in the knowledge graph.
This they pretended was heretical, and through the Archbishop's means they procured a council at Soissons in the year 1121; and without suffering _Abelard_ to make any defence, ordered his book to be burnt by his own hands, and himself to be confined to the convent of St. Medard. This sentence gave him such grief, that he says himself, the unhappy fate of his writing touched him more sensibly than the misfortune he…
Peter Abelard, Letters of Abelard and Heloise
The author is tied to Sic et Non in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Sic et Non
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Fideism.